Health Spending

If you have flexible spending benefits from work that allow you to set aside pre-tax dollars for out-of-pocket health care expenses, you may be interested to hear that recent health insurance reform measures will affect what you can buy with the money in your account next year.

The New York Times reports that,

Another attraction had been the extremely generous list of eligible expenses — including deductibles and co-pays, eyeglasses and dental work, over-the-counter cold medicine, sunscreen and vitamins. But under the new law, starting Jan. 1, flex-spend users will no longer be able to submit claims for over- the-counter medicines unless they have been specifically directed to use them by a doctor.

The program at my current job never actually let me use it for sunscreen or vitamins (to my consternation, since I buy piles of those things), but I have been known to go on year-end shopping sprees to load up on cough drops and adhesive bandages in an attempt to spend down the account on health-related stuff that would keep. Presumably those will no longer be covered in future.

I'll have to double-check the list of eligible expenses before I decide how much to set aside for next year.

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